Don’t feel like spending your hard-earned money on expensive Botox shots and plastic surgery to get rid of those nasty facial wrinkles? Then you might want to take a look at the Facewaver Exercise Mask, a new face stretcher from Japan that promises to give users a more youthful and energetic look. It’s cheaper and doubles as a great Halloween outfit.

It might not look like one, but the Facewaver Exercise Mask is actually a beauty product. The stretchy accessory wraps around your face and helps exercise your muscles while you make all kinds of weird facial expressions. This not only improves and increases blood circulation to your face, but also smooths out any wrinkles, lines and sags in just five minutes of daily use. Available only in pink, the Facewaver is made in Japan (where else?) out of out of nylon and polyurethane to fit most face sizes. Priced at $61, this bizarre invention is a more affordable way to tighten your face and cheeks, although there are yet no reports on whether it actually works. But even if it doesn’t at least you’re left with a great horror movie prop or a scary Halloween mask. So yeah, it’s a great investment any way you look at it.

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His bright eyes have the power to see into your soul, his glossed hair makes girls reach for their computer screens to touch it, and his photo captions make you feel like you’ve skipped grammar classes in school. He is Ahmed Angel – the greatest internet superstar ever…

If you thought Zoolander was just the fruit of Ben Stiller’s wild imagination, think again. He’s real, and his name is Ahmed Angel. Quite an appropriate name for this angelic male super model the world can’t seem to get enough of. Crazy photos of this new internet superstar have been doing the rounds on sites like Buzzfeed or The Huffington Post for the last week, with everyone trying to find out more about him. Apart from his out-worldly prettiness everything else about Ahmed Angel was a mystery. Well, maybe not everything. Anyone could see he was craving attention like his life depended on it, and his love for makeup, hair gel and acid-washed jeans was obvious from the hundreds of edited photos he posted on his Facebook page. But the world wanted something of substance. Who was this dashingly handsome man that captured the imaginations of millions around the world and inspired hundreds of hilarious comments on Reddit with his killer looks? Was he even real? Luckily, Ahmed was kind enough to answer questions posted by various media outlets on his Facebook page, and reveal more about himself.

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This is the story of a girl and her calculator. Instead of staying at home and missing the most memorable party of her high-school years, a girl who did’t get invited to prom decided to attend with her trusty calculator as partner, and posted some cool photos as proof.

“No one asked me to prom, so I took my calculator,” Tumblr user ishipitlikeups (I Ship It Like UPS – coolest id ever) wrote on her blog. Urged by other users to share some photos and prove herself, the girl added a series of pics of her holding her trusty TI-84 Plus Silver Edition graphic calculator all dressed-up and ready to party. He wore a hand-made silk tuxedo complete with a nice little bow tie and was the star of the show as his date introduced him to her friends and teachers. They slow-danced, had a great time together and even managed to make the principal’s weekly email. He wrote: “Here is a quick classic story: A young girl showed up at the Prom alone. I greeted her and asked where her date was. She smiled and reached in to her purse and extracted a calculator she had decorated with a paper tuxedo. We had a good, laugh, only a student would bring a calculator to the Prom.”

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David Rees, a cartoonist, humor writer and self-proclaimed pencil sharpening artisan runs a truly unique business. He charges customers $15 to sharpen their pencils to perfections, using a variety of tools, from pocket knives to sandpaper.

I know what you’re thinking – is this a joke? The 39-year-old entrepreneur gets asked that question a lot, so to clarify everything he even created a special section on his Artisanal Pencil Sharpening website telling everyone that he’s actually providing a real service: “If you start a pencil-sharpening business, you can expect to hear this question a lot. The short answer? No, this is not a joke. You pay David Rees money and he sharpens your pencils. It actually happens.” You can supply your own pencil or you can have Rees sharpen his one of his favorite #2 pencils and ship it to you in a in a display tube with the shavings in a separate bag along with a certificate of authenticity that just happens to mention the pencil is so sharp it is considered a dangerous object. To achieve the desired result, the master sharpener uses all kinds of tools, including general sandpaper, pocket knives and even a special $450 sharpening machine. “It depends on what the client wants to use their pencil for,’’ he says. “That determines the most appropriate pencil technique. Some buy them as inspirational tokens, and others for nostalgic memories of classic No. 2 pencils. There also are journalists who prefer my pencils to pens especially in really cold weather because a pen will freeze up, whereas a pencil won’t.’’

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Luo Dan, a painter and designer from Chonqing, China has been wearing a big deer mask over his head every day since 2009. He claims the bizarre accessory has helped him find inner peace and release the deer within.

Finding artistic inspiration can be pretty tough for an artist, but for 32-year-old Luo Dan it’s as easy as putting on a mask, literally. The young painter says he started wearing his weird deer head in 2009, and quickly got used to putting it on while working and in his spare time. “The deer is a tame animal,” he explained. “Wearing its mask, I could find a long-missing inner peace. When I wear the mask, I feel I am a deer from within.” The fake animal head has also influenced his art, taking a center role in most of his works. Dan doesn’t know exactly how long he’ll keep wearing the deer head, but considering the therapeutic powers he attributes to the mask it’s unlikely he will be taking it off anytime soon. I can understand keeping it on in the privacy of his home, but this guy seems to take the head with him everywhere he goes. I wonder how people react when he comes up to them wearing the ridiculous disguise? It must be really difficult to take a guy wearing an animal mask seriously…I always knew artists were a little cooky, but this is too much.

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Studies have shown  that hugs can truly make lonely people feel better, so a group of Japanese students from Tsukuba University have invented a coat designed to imitate the feeling of a girlfriend hugging you from behind.

Hugging is all the rage right now. London has its own cuddling workshop for people in need of a hug and a professional cuddler in New York City will wrap her arms around you for a fee. But these solutions don’t work very well if you suddenly find yourself in need of a hug and there’s no one around to give it to you. Luckily, a team of Japanese geeks students have come up with a more practical, if weird, solution – a special hugging coat that emulates the sensation of a girlfriend putting her arms around you from behind. Called the Raiju Coat (Fulfillment Coat), this offbeat invention features motors attached to its back to operate the artificial “arms”, which are controlled through a computer using a USB connection. So whenever its owner feels lonely and in need of a fake girlfriend hug, all he has to do is put it on, close his eyes and imagine a cute anime girl putting her arms around him, as the coat takes hold of his waist. To make the experience even more realistic, the Raiju Coat comes with a pair of headphones that plays the sound of footsteps running from behind and pre-recorded sentences like “I’m sorry, were you waiting?”; “Watch your back!”; “Guess who?”; and “Blind side!” With such advanced hugging technology, who needs a real girlfriend?

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They work seven days a week regardless of weather condition, never go on breaks, don’t take bribes and best of all, they require no pay. They are – wait for it – Bangalore’s new lifelike cardboard traffic policemen, and they’re watching you!

India’s tech-city of Bangalore has been facing serious difficulties dealing with traffic violations. Despite low car ownership, the rate of row fatalities has risen sharply in this city of 8.5 million people to at least two road-related deaths per day, in 2012. Some sources say Bangalore needs at least 6,000 traffic policemen to keep things under control, but it currently has a personnel of 3,000. Instead of supplementing their ranks, local authorities have come up with an ingenious idea to make drivers behave at the wheel that doesn’t require significant expenditures – life-size cardboard cutouts of traffic policemen strategically placed on the city’s busiest roads. Only three of them have been deployed so far, but results have been so encouraging that 10 more khaki-wearing fake cops will soon be rolled out to improve Bangalore’s chaotic traffic.

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Kei Akatsu is a Japanese student who wants to travel the world and take photos of beautiful women for his Beauties World Map project. But he needs your help to do it. Traveling isn’t cheap, so he’s turned to an online crowd funding service to fulfill his dream.

The Tokyo University of Science student spent half a year in Vancouver taking photos of cute girls from all over the world and putting together a collection for his Beauties World Map website. He actually managed to meet an impressive number of women, and organized their photos on his site according to their places of origin, age and height. But it was only the beginning of his great photographic experience. Kei Akatsu now wants to travel the world and capture feminine beauty on camera for everyone see. Sadly, he lacks the funds to journey across North and South America, so he turned to Crowdfire, a Japanese online crowd funding service similar to Kickstarter, for help. To attract sponsors, Kei mapped out the entire project and even posted a promotional video and sample photos.

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If you’ve always dreamed of smelling like a walking corpse, you’re in luck, because weird-perfume maker Demeter has recently launched Zombie for Him/Her, a new line of putrid fragrances for both men and women.

Say the Zombie Apocalypse happens tomorrow and you find yourself all alone in a world full of brain eating undead. What’s your best bet of staying alive when all odds are stacked against you? A Zombie Emergency Defense Station might work for a little while, but what if you didn’t have to hide in fear and wait for that inevitable moment when you run out of bullets and supplies? What if you could just blend among the walking dead without them even noticing the presence of your warm body? That’s where the Zombie for Him and Her perfumes can come in handy. Apparently the men’s fragrance is formulated with the scent of dried leaves, mushrooms, mildew, moss, and earth and will have you smelling like a decomposing body as soon as you spray it on. The ladies’ zombie perfume is a lighter version of the above “with a touch of Dregs from the bottom of the wine barrel for that feminine touch.” Since they’re only going to be available through April 30, you might want to stock up on zombie perfumes for the impending doom.

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One of the biggest film franchises ever made, the Twilight Saga came to an end with the launch of Breaking Dawn – Part 2. It was a celebrated moment by fans of the series, but now that all the hype is gone, many of them are struggling to accept the fact that their favorite blood-suckers won’t be returning to the silver screen. Luckily, now they have Twi-line, a special phone line that helps them relive their favorite Twilight moments.

It must be tough coming to terms with the fact that vampire heartthrob Edward Cullen will never show his pale face again in a Twilight film, although considering the state of the film industry today, a spin-off isn’t out of the question. For now though, the series is officially over, and apparently that’s really painful for a lot of fans. To celebrate the UK launch of the Breaking Dawn – Part 2 DVD, and to comfort Twi-hards, the film’s distributor has set up a special phone line where they can listen to memorable quotes from their favorite characters over and over again. I don’t get what the big deal is, when they could just replay scenes from the movie and also see their heroes speaking those lines, but it seems many fans actually love the idea of hearing vampire Edward, werewolf Jacob Black and their love interest Isabella Swan over the phone.

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A 26-year-old pregnant woman from West Los Angeles, California, has agreed to allow online voters to chose the name of her child, in exchange for $5,000.

Natasha Hill, a young art teacher from LA, is expecting a baby in September, but she had already started thinking about his/her name. She considered naming her child Katorah or Winter, but since she couldn’t make up her mind, she decided to enter a competition organized by Belly Ballot, a Austin, Texas-based startup that lets parents-to-be crowdsource their babies names with friends and family. According to the online company, voter will be presented with a list of 10 names – five boy names and five girl names – chosen by Belly Ballot and sponsors of the contest. The one with the most votes by the time the ballot concludes will be the name Hill’s baby will legally have, at least until he or she turns 18. Belly Ballot founder Lacey Moler assured participants brand names or names that are “too crazy” won’t be included in the 10 options.

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Shouting is what some men do best. And when a group of such men get together, you can hardly expect to hear something musical. But that’s what makes the Shouting Men’s Choir in Oulu, northern Finland, so special. The men shout, and it becomes music.

The choir consists of 30 men who generally dress in black suits for their performances. Most locals consider the choir to be a product of long nights in a town with little to do, the north-Finnish sense of humor that borders on the absurd, and of course, a steady supply of vodka. Mika Ronkainen, a local filmmaker, made a documentary film with the choir and its founder as the subject, called Mieskuoro Huutajat. That translates to Screaming Men. It was the first Finnish film to be accepted at the Sundance Festival, and also the first to get international distribution. I saw a short clip from the film on YouTube, in which Petri Sirvio, the founder and director of the Shouting Men’s choir says that the best part of the group’s performance is the element of surprise. “I trained them quite well,” he says rather unabashedly.

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A good way to make sure your advertisement gets plenty of exposure is to place it where a lot of people are looking. With this important marketing rule in mind, one Japanese advertising service is offering brands a novel way to raise awareness to their business – placing advertising stickers on the bare thighs of young girls.

We’ve featured some pretty bizarre advertising techniques here, on Oddity Central. We’ve had people renting out their last names to the highest bidder, tattooing brand names on their faces, and even using animals as living billboards, But so far, women’s legs have been off limits. Well, not anymore; Japanese PR company Absolute Territory PR has begun paying young women to wear advertising stickers on their “absolute territory” – the part of their thighs between the edge of their miniskirts and their high socks. Apparently this area of the female thigh is very popular with Japanese men, as evidenced by the fact that it even has its own Facebook page. You’d think such a daring way of advertising would be frowned upon by most girls, but as of November of last year, over 1,300 girls had applied for the agency’s service, and their number is growing fast.

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What would you do if you had 140 feet available in your living room? You’d probably do something lame, like get a couple of armchairs, a sofa and a coffee table right? But then again you’re not an awesome Star Wars fan like Barry “Zipidi Doodah”. He turned his living room into an awe-inspiring diorama of the Battle of Hoth, from the Empire Strikes Back.

Looking at the photos below, you’re probably thinking something like “wow, this guy has sick Photoshop skills”, but the truth is none of the pics are altered in any way. The special effects you see exist in real life and were built by hand, by Barry himself. It’s unbelievable, I know, and I’m not even that big a Star Wars fan. This guy somehow got his wife to agree to let him use the 140-feet living room space, and went on to recreate the iconic Battle of Hoth with almost perfect detail. Giant AT-ATs, Imperial Probe Droids, tauntauns, gun turrets, stormtroopers, gliding starfighters, he has them all right there in his living room. Sure it’s a bit difficult to maneuver around, especially when you’re in a hurry to get to the bathroom, and there are wires hanging from the ceilings to support some of the decor, but like Barry himself admits, nothing attracts the ladies like having a big Star Wars diorama in your living room.

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A Boston father and his 14-year-old daughter have recently made the headlines after the man posted a photo of a Facebook Deactivation Agreement that states the girl will receive 200$ if she doesn’t log into her Facebook account for the next five months.

Facebook addiction is one of the most talked-about issues of the moment, and when it comes to teens, the problem is even bigger. But one Boston parent may have found the perfect way to convince his daughter to take a nice long break from the popular social media platform – he’s paying her $200. The enterprising young girl has managed to strike a deal with her father, Paul Baier, that involves him paying her $50 in April and an extra $150 in June, if she respects her part of the agreement. “It was her idea, which I fully support,” Paul told the Daily Dot. “She wants to earn money and also finds Facebook a distraction and a waste of time sometimes.”

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